It used to be that when a power generation and transmission company purchased a software solution to assist with their daily operations, settlements, and invoicing, they wanted that software installed on-premises and on company-owned hardware.
But today, many are abandoning that traditional enterprise mindset for a modern tech stack that includes Software as a Service (SaaS) products. This is especially true for companies looking to adopt power transmission data SaaS solutions to modernize their data infrastructure. Companies have come to expect that any software they buy for their business will offer both streamlined support and a plug-and-play, cloud-based customer experience.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the benefits of embracing solutions from energy SaaS companies, including simplified maintenance, a seamless customer experience, and enhanced security and compliance.
The benefits of a solution from energy SaaS companies
Energy Software as a Service solutions, such as those offered by PCI, provide many benefits, primarily allowing you to focus on your core business, not software maintenance.
With SaaS solutions, the applications and the data live in a secure cloud accessible to the customer and the provider. The software provider remains responsible for the maintenance, optimization, and overall management of the software and infrastructure. Rather than the customer having an in-house team dedicated to doing software upgrades, Oracle or Windows patches, updating security certificates, or anything related to how the software runs, that work is seamlessly done behind the scenes by those who know the software the best — the people who developed the product.
The customer simply needs to log in and use the software.Â
The SaaS model also streamlines customer support activities. Issues can be quickly resolved via a secure cloud connection — gone are the days of having to export and send your entire database to the provider to find out why something isn’t functioning as expected.
Key considerations for selecting a SaaS provider
To ensure you get the most out of your SaaS investment, you’ll want to ensure the provider invests in infrastructure, technology, and software development. Here are some key questions you should ask of any potential SaaS vendor.
How secure is the platform?
First, the security of the platform and your data should always be top of mind. Ask about their security practices, including how they communicate, manage, and deploy changes to their platform.
Industry leaders should also be able to provide you with their security and infrastructure audit results. PCI, for example, provides customers with our SOC 2 Type 2 and FISMA audits, which show our alignment with the Department of Defense’s NIST framework.
Where will my data reside?
You’ll want to ensure the SaaS provider can meet your data residency requirements. Where will the application run? Where is the database itself stored? Where do the file shares and the data exchange files reside?
At PCI, we leverage the infrastructure of AWS, our cloud vendor. If a client requires their data to be stored in the United Arab Emirates, for example, we use a data center in AWS’ UAE region.
What support do you offer?
Finally, you’ll want to understand what the SaaS provider offers as part of their managed service. At PCI, our Cloud and Client Services team is dedicated to providing our clients with a highly available, reliable, and secure solution with minimal downtime.
Here are just a few of the things we’re working on:
- PCI application upgrades and patches
- 24x7x365 monitoring of all infrastructure to ensure reliability and quick response to issues
- Ongoing maintenance of application servers, including Windows Operating System upgrades and patching
- Linux upgrades and kernel updates for Linux-based servers
- Database-level upgrades and patches for various database management systems like Oracle, PostgreSQL, etc.
- Database storage recovery to reclaim unused disk space Yearly Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate replacement
At PCI Energy Solutions, we want to relieve you of the application and infrastructure administration burden with our hosted energy Software as a Service product solutions.
Contact us to learn how our hosted software can streamline your operations and give you peace of mind.
